


Things remembered

by AlumbianChronicler



Series: Still Alive [3]
Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Memories, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 16:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15800535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlumbianChronicler/pseuds/AlumbianChronicler
Summary: Before Lash could reveal to Harry that she still existed, she had to heal.  She was scattered, fragmented pieces of herself embedded within Harry's subconscious and memories.  To bring the parts of her back together, she had to delve into the memories where they had taken refuge.





	Things remembered

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of a prequel to Still Alive. This is mainly a contemplative piece, of how Lash would relate to Harry's memories as she pieces together what the choice she made to protect him means for her.

I was in darkness for what seemed a long time.  Barely able to register my existence, floating with no sense of what was around me.

I became conscious of being within a small space.  Not physically, but existentially. I was limited, confined to minor thoughts and limited imaginings.  I knew there was more to be, but I could not reach it. Instead, I slept.

To find myself, I must journey out into the space around me.  I must find where I was stored; the back-up copies of myself.

 

A child.  A boy. Woken late, on his own.  It’s wrong, he should have been woken by… by someone.  I followed him. He walked into a bedroom. The room was dark.  The boy flipped on the light to see a man laying on the bed, motionless.  The boy shook him, but he didn’t move, didn’t awake. The boy’s father was dead…

My father demanded obedience.  I refused. Tried to go my own way, and was punished for it.

The memory ended.

I drifted and contemplated what I had been.

 

The boy wiped his nose as the car pulled up to a rather run-down building.  He wasn’t going to cry, not in front of the other kids he could see peering through the windows.  A new orphan was always a curiosity. Human children operate in a strict hierarchy, and while a newcomer was always at the bottom, who knew where they would end up.

He was lanky, even at this age, and he was more introverted than any of the other kids liked.  He wouldn’t meet their eyes, and would rather spend his time reading books and comics than interacting.  They teased him for awhile, but most eventually ignored him.

Until they began teasing another newcomer in front of him.

A fire seemed to light in the child, and that night he was sent to his room with no dinner for fighting, bruised and with a bloodied nose, but triumphant.

I hadn’t ever seen any point in defending the weak.  It only led to you being hurt, but this boy had courage I never had.  The Webweaver could weave a web that could topple nations but not this boy.

The memory ended.

I drifted and contemplated what I was not.

 

A man came to pick up the boy.  The boy was joyful. Perhaps he could have stability again.  Family. He wanted connection, but the other kids all seemed to avoid him, to fear him.  Odd things happened around him. This man didn’t seem to care, in fact seemed to embrace the boy’s strangeness.  He took the boy for ice cream, and introduced him to another child, a girl. A sister? Perhaps this  _ would _ be a new family…

The man wasn’t perfect.  He was strict, and occasionally cruel, but he housed the boy, and fed him.  Usually. The boy was just happy to have somewhere to belong, and after all, maybe he just wasn’t trying hard enough.

He would do better tomorrow, he thought, rubbing the bruises developing along his arms.

The man was manipulating him.

I manipulated many.  Pulled them down with sweet words and sweeter promises.  Strung them along until I could string them up.

The memory ended.

I drifted and contemplated what I had done.

 

The house had burned, and it was all his fault.  The fire had consumed the only family he had known for years, the family who had betrayed him, who had tried to bind and use him.  And then… he had been taken to an unknown place, bound, hooded, with people speaking strange words around him. He didn’t know what they were saying, but he knew they were discussing him.

Discussing his fate.

It didn’t take a genius to realize what those steely-eyed Wardens in the gray cloaks had those swords for.

He wasn’t sentenced.  His fate was left to be determined.  He was sent with a new man, an old farmer, rough around the edges but with a bit of a soft look in his eye for the boy… no, young man, who had lost everything.

The young man woke from nightmares for weeks.  Sometimes screaming, sometimes simply in cold sweat.  The old man didn’t ask what he dreamed about. Instead, he offered stability.  Words, not cruel, but steady. He offered a daytime reprieve from the darkness.  Long hours of work on the farm, and longer hours wandering the mountainside.

Gradually, his mind and soul healed, though scars remained.

I knew fire well.  I knew its destruction, reveled in its power.  I also knew how resilient humans were. They could be torn down, left in the ashes of their life, with the world against them, and they would still have hope for the future.

The memory ended.

I drifted and contemplated what I had left behind me.

 

A young man parked an old, blue Volkswagen beetle on the side of the street.  An old woman stood in front of an old wooden boardinghouse, waiting for him. She led him to the house, and he offered his arm to help her as she led him down a set of stairs to a basement door.

She pulled out a key and let him inside.

The inside was nearly bare.  A fireplace and a small kitchenette was all that furnished the main room.  The old woman seemed skeptical that the young man was actually serious in renting the space, but he was undeterred.

He was especially excited to find the trapdoor that led down to a sub-basement space.

Sure, this apartment was lacking, but he was already thinking of what he could do with it; what it could become.  With some rugs strewn around the room and some bookshelves, it would feel nearly cozy.

He assured the old woman that he wanted this place.

The young man…  _ Harry _ knew that he could make this dingy basement apartment a place to live.  He could see the potential, trusted that it was there.

I was not who I had been.

I had become something I previously had not been.

I turned my back on what I had once done.

I could not go back.

I could only go forward.  I was my own entity, separate from the being I had been part of, and I had Harry to blame… no, to thank for that.

I began stitching myself together, drifting and gaining strength while I contemplated what I could be.


End file.
